BEIJING — China’s top leaders are retaking the initiative after the country’s worst political crisis in a generation, showcasing a united front and moving forward with plans for a major leadership reshuffle later this year.

But the ouster of Bo Xilai, the populist icon formerly in charge of the southwestern megacity of Chongqing, has spurred weeks of frenzied internal politicking and a rare dissenting vote within the Politburo Standing Committee, according to interviews with publishers, academics and analysts tied to the Communist Party’s upper echelons or its powerful families.

They say that the outward calm is tenuous and was achieved only after China’s leadership team of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao appealed to party elders for support and yielded important posts in Chongqing to representatives of other influential political blocs.

“They want everyone to believe that the top level has no problem — that there’s no split and no struggle,” said Jin Zhong, publisher of the influential China-watching magazine Open, in Hong Kong. “But this is a false impression.”

According to people briefed by central party officials, Mr. Bo is being confined to his house in Beijing, watched by the Central Guard Bureau, a unit of the People’s Liberation Army under the control of the party’s General Office. He faces a disciplinary investigation over a range of allegations of corruption and abuse of power, these people say. His wife, a noted lawyer, is under more formal detention in connection with some of those allegations.

Much is at stake because the party is undergoing its once-in-a-decade leadership reshuffle. Over the next year, the Communist Party will get a new leadership team and general secretary, who will pick a new premier and other top government positions.

Until his fall, Mr. Bo was a contender for one of the leadership slots. But in early February, Mr. Bo’s police chief, Wang Lijun, fled to the United States Consulate in Chengdu with damning evidence about his boss.

That precipitated a divisive meeting on March 7 of the party’s Standing Committee, the nine-person body that effectively rules China, according to two people close to ruling circles. Eight of the nine top leaders, including the current party boss, Hu Jintao; the country’s premier, Wen Jiabao; the incoming party boss, Xi Jinping; and the incoming premier, Li Keqiang, are said to have supported or gone along with the decision to remove and investigate Mr. Bo.

But, crucially, the head of the country’s ubiquitous security services, Zhou Yongkang, resisted, these people said. Mr. Bo was seen as Mr. Zhou’s possible successor and Mr. Zhou had previously endorsed Mr. Bo’s zealous crackdown on organized crime. The position of Mr. Bo’s onetime patron, the former leader Jiang Zemin, was unclear, although he appears not to have intervened in the decision.

Mr. Bo failed to attend a Parliament meeting the next day, but at a news conference on March 9, he denied any wrongdoing and predicted that Mr. Hu would eventually visit Chongqing. But on March 15, official media issued a terse statement saying Mr. Bo had been removed from his main post.

That was not the end of the effort to forge broader consensus, party insiders say. Instead, top leaders like Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen have met with ministers, provincial leaders and party elders to marshal approval for Mr. Bo’s ouster and solicit views on handling the case. Some of those approached include the former premiers Zhu Rongji and Li Peng, as well as the former top leaders Li Ruihuan and Qiao Shi, people familiar with the matter say.

Party officials have also floated trial-balloon versions of the investigation. At closed-door briefings, selected top officials have been read documents from central offices enumerating a range of initial charges against Mr. Bo, they said. Mr. Wang has been branded a “traitor.”

Reflecting the uncertainty at the top, some analysts say, online censors have allowed some damaging rumors and details about Mr. Bo and Mr. Zhou to circulate widely, but also tolerated some support for Mr. Bo.

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But outwardly, top leaders are pushing unity. After failing to appear in person at a national legal conference last week, Mr. Zhou has now been in the Chinese press regularly urging legal and police officials to toe the party line. Mr. Hu has embarked on a trip abroad. On Tuesday, the main army newspaper ordered military officers to ignore “social noise” and “hostile forces,” and to unite under the party.

The party congress is also thought to be going ahead largely as planned. Key decisions will not be made until the summer, but a line-up for the nine-person Standing Committee is slowly jelling, with Mr. Bo given almost no chance of assuming a position on it. Instead, he appears to be fighting to retain some kind of ceremonial post and to avoid prison.

Mr. Bo’s fate may rest in part on unraveling the full story of his fall, which is full of uncertainties.

Why Mr. Wang, the police chief, fled to the United States Consulate, for example, is still not clear. A General Office document alleges that Mr. Bo obstructed justice and retaliated against Mr. Wang for allowing a police investigation related to his family. Some say this pertained to the death last year of an Englishman, Neil Heywood, a family friend and business associate. Mr. Wang is said to have pressed this case at the U.S. Consulate, according to people briefed on the matter.

But most people interviewed for this article said Mr. Heywood’s death was only part of a chain of events going back months. Last October, according to a Communist Party academic who knew Mr. Bo and a political analyst with ties to ruling circles, the party’s Commission for Discipline Inspection began to investigate Mr. Wang for corruption.

Mr. Wang, possibly in retaliation for Mr. Bo bending to pressure from the inspection, twice filed complaints to Discipline Inspection against Mr. Bo. Mr. Wang alleged that Mr. Bo’s wife, the lawyer Gu Kailai, had transferred huge sums of money overseas, and accused Mr. Bo of seeking to resist “central party authorities” in the course of governing Chongqing, including deploying wiretaps to eavesdrop on other leaders, according to the academic. At the time, he added, Mr. Wang’s complaints were rebuffed.

The academic, an old friend of Mr. Bo’s who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Bo told him in two telephone conversations before his dismissal that he was confident he would weather the scandal but was resigned to accept possible repercussions.

“He told me, ‘I can withstand investigation’ on these two matters” of corruption and political insubordination, said the friend. But later Mr. Bo noted that both had been in jail as young men during the Cultural Revolution, a period of turmoil from 1966 to 1976, remarking to his friend, “What hardships have we not endured?”

Mr. Bo’s continuing influence helps explain why the party has not issued a fuller explanation. He is still, formally, a member of the 25-member Politburo, and commands support among some generals, descendants of revolutionaries and others in the Communist Party’s left wing who are uneasy about the loss of traditional Communist ideology.

Ultimately, even if Mr. Bo is found to have had corrupt dealings, those who have supported him within the party hierarchy are likely to insist on concessions for his removal from power.

Already, horse-trading appears to have begun. Mr. Bo’s temporary replacement in Chongqing, Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang, is like Mr. Bo a protégé of Mr. Jiang and a contender for promotion to the Standing Committee. A veteran of Mr. Hu’s political power base was positioned to replace Mr. Wang atop Chongqing’s police force, only to be transferred in recent days in favor of another man closer to Mr. Zhou’s camp.

Edy Yin and Li Bibo contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on March 30, 2012, on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: China’s Hierarchy Strives to Regain Unity After Chongqing Leader’s Ouster. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe